Nisha G. Patel, Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means. In her testimony, Patel identifies six ways to strengthen the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program that put children at the center and strengthen parental job opportunities: make child poverty reduction an explicit goal of the TANF program; set a floor for spending on core benefits and services; prohibit states from claiming nongovernmental third-party expenditures as maintenance of effort (MOE); expand educational and training opportunities to create access to good jobs in the 21st-century economy; support technical assistance and demonstration projects for state experimentation with employment outcome measures; and support demonstration projects that promote whole-family approaches through public-private partnerships.